Case Study 12: Tanzania - Twende Na Wakati (Let's Go with the Times)

In 1993 the president of Population Communications International (PCI) convinced Radio Tanzania (RTD) to produce a radio soap aimed at family planning and reproductive health behavior, including HIV/AIDS prevention. Twende Na Wakati depicts the daily life of Tanzanians, particularly the current generation, in their struggle to improve their quality of life, despite harsh economic difficulties. The story centers around Mkwaju, a promiscuous truck driver, the main negative character; Tenu, his wife, who serves as the main transitional character; and Bina, a nurse, the main positive character in terms of family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention. The positive characters incorporate concepts from the Moral Framework into their daily lives and thus become role models. The negative characters are punished for their behavior; for example, Mkwaju loses his job, becomes an alcoholic and contracts AIDS.

There are about nine storylines running at any one time and 18 main characters. Two 30-minute episodes are broadcast per week. Each episode ends with a 30-second epilogue, which summarizes the educational messages, poses rhetorical questions, and urges listeners to tune into the next episode.

Twende Na Wakati is the most thoroughly researched program in the history of the entertainment-education genre. It is widely quoted as proof of the efficacy of entertainment-education radio for behavior-change and the use of the control-area methodology gives great credibility to the impact data. However, nothing can be achieved without an entertaining product and Twende Na Wakati seems, deservedly, to have sustained its popularity down the years through good stories and great characters. Largely run by an indigenous Tanzanian organization, the challenge now is to sustain the good management at Radio Tanzania, with all the difficulties that a national radio of an impoverished country normally faces.

Management: The drama is managed by RTD's Martha Swai, who reports to the Director of Broadcasting and to UNFPA.

Staffing: Nine Radio Tanzania staff work on the drama. PCI provides training and exchange workshops on scriptwriting, research and production.

Writing and Production: A Moral Framework, the main characters and a synopsis of the plot for the first 204 episodes were all created in a two-week workshop in 1993. The Moral Framework consisted of a set of 57 educational themes, based in part on findings from the formative research and developed by a panel of scriptwriters and representatives from PCI, staff of Radio Tanzania and various Tanzanian religious, governmental and educational organizations. The results of this workshop served as guidelines for the soap's writing team for several years. All 57 elements of the Moral Framework have been addressed at least once. Some issues are dropped every year and new issues added; notably there are more issues now on youth and male involvement in reproductive health.

Formative Research: POFLEP did extensive pre-production research in 1992. The 4,800 interviews and 160 focus groups with the target audience had a great deal of influence on the Moral Framework. Findings led to incorporating HIV/AIDS prevention along with family planning. The main finding on HIV/AIDS was a KAP gap - high knowledge and favourable attitudes but not accompanied by widespread practice.

Monitoring and Audience Feedback: Radio Tanzania received 211 letters from listeners about Twende Na Wakati, by far the largest number of letters ever written to Radio Tanzania, and this in a country with low levels of literacy and high postage costs. Many listeners offered advice to the soap's characters, showing that they were emulating the positive characters' behavior by adopting family planning themselves.

A system of satellite families was set up. In return for radios and batteries, about 30 families agreed to listen regularly to the soap, fill out a diary on their reactions, and be personally interviewed at certain intervals. This data-gathering arrangement was difficult to sustain as an evaluation tool, but it provided useful feedback to scriptwriters.

An impact assessment strategy was well thought through prior to the first broadcasts. Excluding Dodoma from broadcasts as a control area required a prior agreement between the Tanzanian MOH, the broadcaster, the University of New Mexico, PCI and UNFPA. In the second year, Twende Na Wakati had become Radio Tanzania's most popular program and was clearly having positive health effects. This presented an ethical dilemma because, in effect, the research denied access to potential health benefits to about 600,000 listeners.

Supporting Activities: RTD runs a cartoon series and a weekly "Reader's Digest" of the plot in the Tanzanian press. The radio station also has a regular discussion program, which addresses issues from audience letters. During quarterly Field Monitoring Trips the staff of RTD distribute condoms (paid for by UNFPA).

Sustainability: The series could not be self-sustaining without donor support, because there is an insufficient income base to attract commercial sponsorship. There have been commercial links in the past; a Tanzanian company selling foam mattresses, Ply Foam (Tanzania) Ltd. was the advertising sponsor for the first two years of broadcasts. Ironically, Ply Foam had to discontinue advertising on Twende Na Wakati because the company could not meet demand - a measure of the drama's popularity. However, donor support does not seem to be flagging, and the series could go on successfully for several more years.